NAME

DESCRIPTION

Yum uses a configuration file at /etc/yum/yum.conf.
Additional configuration files are also read from the directories set
by the reposdir option (default is ‘/etc/yum/repos.d’). See the
reposdir option below for further details.

PARAMETERS

There are two types of sections in the yum configuration file(s): main
and repository. Main defines all global configuration options. There
should be only one main section. The repository section(s) define the
configuration for each repository/server. There should be one or more
repository sections.

[main]OPTIONS

The [main] section must exist for yum to do anything. It consists of
the following options:
cachedir Directory where yum should store its cache and db
files. The default is ‘/var/cache/yum’.
persistdir Directory where yum should store information that
should persist over multiple runs. The default is
‘/var/lib/yum’.
keepcache Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Determines whether or not yum keeps
the cache of headers and packages after successful installation.
Default is ’1’ (keep files)
reposdir A list of directories where yum should look for .repo
files which define repositories to use. Default is
‘/etc/yum/repos.d’. Each file in this directory should contain
one or more repository sections as documented in [repository]options below. These will be merged with the repositories
defined in /etc/yum/yum.conf to form the complete set of
repositories that yum will use.
debuglevel Debug message output level. Practical range is 0-10.
Default is ‘2’.
errorlevel Error message output level. Practical range is 0-10.
Default is ‘2’.
logfile Full directory and file name for where yum should write
its log file.
gpgcheck Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not it
should perform a GPG signature check on packages. When this is
set in the [main] section it sets the default for all
repositories. This option also determines whether or not an
install of a package from a local RPM file will be GPG signature
checked. The default is ‘0’.
repo_gpgcheck Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not
it should perform a GPG signature check on the repodata. When
this is set in the [main] section it sets the default for all
repositories. The default is ‘0’.
skip_broken Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Resolve depsolve problems by
removing packages that are causing problems from the
transaction.
assumeyes Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Determines whether or not yum
prompts for confirmation of critical actions. Default is ‘0’ (do
prompt).
Command-line option: -yalwaysprompt Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Without this option, yum will
not prompt for confirmation when the list of packages to be
installed exactly matches those given on the command line.
Unless assumeyes is enabled, it will still prompt for package
removal, or when additional packages need to be installed to
fulfill dependencies. Default is ‘1’.
tolerant Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. If enabled, then yum will be
tolerant of errors on the command line with regard to packages.
For example: if you request to install foo, bar and baz and baz
is installed; yum won’t error out complaining that baz is
already installed. Default to ‘0’ (not tolerant).
Command-line option: -texclude List of packages to exclude from updates or installs.
This should be a space separated list. Shell globs using
wildcards (eg. * and ?) are allowed.
exactarch Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. Set to ‘1’ to make yum update only
update the architectures of packages that you have installed.
ie: with this enabled yum will not install an i686 package to
update an i386 package. Default is ‘1’.
installonlypkgs List of packages that should only ever be
installed, never updated. Kernels in particular fall into this
category. Defaults to kernel, kernel-smp, kernel-bigmem, kernel-
enterprise, kernel-debug, kernel-unsupported.
installonly_limit Number of packages listed in installonlypkgs
to keep installed at the same time. Setting to 0 disables this
feature. Default is ’0’. Note that this functionality used to be
in the "installonlyn" plugin, where this option was altered via.
tokeep. Note that as of version 3.2.24, yum will now look in
the yumdb for a installonly attribute on installed packages. If
that attribute is "keep", then they will never be removed.
kernelpkgnames List of package names that are kernels. This is
really only here for the updating of kernel packages and should
be removed out in the yum 2.1 series.
showdupesfromrepos Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set to ‘1’ if you wish to
show any duplicate packages from any repository, from package
listings like the info or list commands. Set to ‘0’ if you want
only to see the newest packages from any repository. Default is
‘0’.
obsoletes This option only has affect during an update. It
enables yum’s obsoletes processing logic. Useful when doing
distribution level upgrades. See also the yum upgrade command
documentation for more details (yum(8)). Default is ‘true’.
Command-line option: --obsoletesoverwrite_groups Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Used to determine yum’s
behaviour if two or more repositories offer the package groups
with the same name. If overwrite_groups is ‘1’ then the group
packages of the last matching repository will be used. If
overwrite_groups is ‘0’ then the groups from all matching
repositories will be merged together as one large group.
enable_group_conditionals Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Determines whether
yum will allow the use of conditionals packages. Default is ‘1’
(package conditionals are allowed).
group_package_types List of the following: optional, default,
mandatory. Tells yum which type of packages in groups will be
installed when ’groupinstall’ is called. Default is: default,
mandatory
installroot Specifies an alternative installroot, relative to
which all packages will be installed.
Command-line option: --installrootdistroverpkg The package used by yum to determine the "version"
of the distribution. This can be any installed package. Default
is ‘redhat-release’. You can see what provides this manually by
using: "yum whatprovides redhat-release".
diskspacecheck Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set this to ‘0’ to disable the
checking for sufficient diskspace before a RPM transaction is
run. Default is ‘1’ (perform the check).
tsflags Comma or space separated list of transaction flags to
pass to the rpm transaction set. These include ’noscripts’,
’notriggers’, ’nodocs’, ’test’, and ’repackage’. You can set
all/any of them. However, if you don’t know what these do in the
context of an rpm transaction set you’re best leaving it alone.
Default is an empty list.
recent Number of days back to look for ‘recent’ packages added
to a repository. Used by the listrecent command. Default is
‘7’.
retries Set the number of times any attempt to retrieve a file
should retry before returning an error. Setting this to ‘0’
makes yum try forever. Default is ‘10’.
keepalive Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Set whether HTTP keepalive should
be used for HTTP/1.1 servers that support it. This can improve
transfer speeds by using one connection when downloading
multiple files from a repository. Default is ‘1’.
timeout Number of seconds to wait for a connection before timing
out. Defaults to 30 seconds. This may be too short of a time for
extremely overloaded sites.
http_caching Determines how upstream HTTP caches are instructed
to handle any HTTP downloads that Yum does. This option can take
the following values:
‘all’ means that all HTTP downloads should be cached.
‘packages’ means that only RPM package downloads should be
cached (but not repository metadata downloads).
‘none’ means that no HTTP downloads should be cached.
The default is ‘all’. This is recommended unless you are
experiencing caching related issues. Try to at least use
‘packages’ to minimize load on repository servers.
throttle Enable bandwidth throttling for downloads. This option
can be expressed as a absolute data rate in bytes/sec. An SI
prefix (k, M or G) may be appended to the bandwidth value (eg.
‘5.5k’ is 5.5 kilobytes/sec, ‘2M’ is 2 Megabytes/sec).
Alternatively, this option can specify the percentage of total
bandwidth to use (eg. ‘60%’). In this case the bandwidth option
should be used to specify the maximum available bandwidth.
Set to ‘0’ to disable bandwidth throttling. This is the default.
bandwidth Use to specify the maximum available network bandwidth
in bytes/second. Used with the throttle option (above). If
throttle is a percentage and bandwidth is ‘0’ then bandwidth
throttling will be disabled. If throttle is expressed as a data
rate (bytes/sec) then this option is ignored. Default is ‘0’ (no
bandwidth throttling).
sslcacert Path to the directory containing the databases of the
certificate authorities yum should use to verify SSL
certificates. Defaults to none - uses system default
sslverify Boolean - should yum verify SSL certificates/hosts at
all. Defaults to True
sslclientcert Path to the SSL client certificate yum should use
to connect to repos/remote sites Defaults to none.
sslclientkey Path to the SSL client key yum should use to
connect to repos/remote sites Defaults to none.
history_record Boolean - should yum record history entries for
transactions. This takes some disk space, and some extra time in
the transactions. But it allows how to know a lot of information
about what has happened before, and display it to the user with
the history info/list/summary commands. yum also provides the
history undo/redo commands. Defaults to True.
history_record_packages This is a list of package names that
should be recorded as having helped the transaction. yum plugins
have an API to add themselves to this, so it should not normally
be necessary to add packages here. Not that this is also used
for the packages to look for in --version. Defaults to rpm, yum,
yum-metadata-parser.
commands List of functional commands to run if no functional
commands are specified on the command line (eg. "update foo bar
baz quux"). None of the short options (eg. -y, -e, -d) are
accepted for this option.
syslog_ident XXX not implemented yet
syslog_facility XXX not implemented yet
proxy URL to the proxy server that yum should use.
proxy_username username to use for proxy
proxy_password password for this proxy
plugins Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Global switch to enable or disable
yum plugins. Default is ‘0’ (plugins disabled). See the PLUGINS
section of the yum(8) man for more information on installing yum
plugins.
pluginpath A list of directories where yum should look for
plugin modules. Default is ‘/usr/share/yum-plugins’ and
‘/usr/lib/yum-plugins’.
pluginconfpath A list of directories where yum should look for
plugin configuration files. Default is ‘/etc/yum/pluginconf.d’.
metadata_expire Time (in seconds) after which the metadata will
expire. So that if the current metadata downloaded is less than
this many seconds old then yum will not update the metadata
against the repository. If you find that yum is not downloading
information on updates as often as you would like lower the
value of this option. You can also change from the default of
using seconds to using days, hours or minutes by appending a d,
h or m respectively. The default is 1.5 hours, to compliment
yum-updatesd running once an hour. It’s also possible to use
the word "never", meaning that the metadata will never expire.
Note that when using a metalink file the metalink must always be
newer than the metadata for the repository, due to the
validation, so this timeout also applies to the metalink file.
mirrorlist_expire Time (in seconds) after which the mirrorlist
locally cached will expire. If the current mirrorlist is less
than this many seconds old then yum will not download another
copy of the mirrorlist, it has the same extra format as
metadata_expire. If you find that yum is not downloading the
mirrorlists as often as you would like lower the value of this
option.
mdpolicy You can select from different metadata download
policies depending on how much data you want to download with
the main repository metadata index. The advantages of
downloading more metadata with the index is that you can’t get
into situations where you need to use that metadata later and
the versions available aren’t compatible (or the user lacks
privileges) and that if the metadata is corrupt in any way yum
will revert to the previous metadata.
‘instant’ - Just download the new metadata index, this is
roughly what yum always did, however it now does some checking
on the index and reverts if it classifies it as bad.
‘group:primary’ - Download the primary metadata with the index.
This contains most of the package information and so is almost
always required anyway. This is the default.
‘group:small’ - With the primary also download the updateinfo
metadata, this is required for yum-security operations and it
also used in the graphical clients. This file also tends to be
significantly smaller than most others.
‘group:main’ - With the primary and updateinfo download the
filelists metadata and the group metadata. The filelists data is
required for operations like "yum install /bin/bash", and also
some dependency resolutions require it. The group data is used
in some graphical clients and for group operations like "yum
grouplist Base".
‘group:all’ - Download all metadata listed in the index,
currently the only one not listed above is the other metadata,
which contains the changelog information which is used by yum-
changelog. This is what "yum makecache" uses.
multilib_policy Can be set to ’all’ or ’best’. All means install
all possible arches for any package you want to install.
Therefore yum install foo will install foo.i386 and foo.x86_64
on x86_64, if it is available. Best means install the best arch
for this platform, only.
bugtracker_url URL where bugs should be filed for yum.
Configurable for local versions or distro-specific bugtrackers.
color Display colorized output automatically, depending on the
output terminal, always (using ANSI codes) or never. Command-
line option: --colorcolor_list_installed_older The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info installed which are older than the latest
available package with the same name and arch. Default is
‘bold’. Possible values are a comma separated list containing:
bold, blink, dim, reverse, underline, fg:black, fg:red,
fg:green, fg:yellow, fg:blue, fg:magenta, fg:cyan, fg:white,
bg:black, bg:red, bg:green, bg:yellow, bg:blue, bg:magenta,
bg:cyan, bg:white.
color_list_installed_newer The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info installed which are newer than the latest
available package with the same name and arch. Default is
‘bold,yellow’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.
color_list_installed_reinstall The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info installed which is the same version as the
latest available package with the same name and arch. Default
is ‘normal’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.
color_list_installed_extra The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info installed which has no available package
with the same name and arch. Default is ‘bold,red’. See
color_list_installed_older for possible values.
color_list_available_upgrade The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info available which is an upgrade for the
latest installed package with the same name and arch. Default
is ‘bold,blue’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.
color_list_available_downgrade The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info available which is a downgrade for the
latest installed package with the same name and arch. Default
is ‘dim,cyan’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.
color_list_available_install The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info available which has no installed package
with the same name and arch. Default is ‘normal’. See
color_list_installed_older for possible values.
color_list_available_reinstall The colorization/highlighting for
packages in list/info available which is the same version as the
installed package with the same name and arch. Default is
‘bold,underline,green. See color_list_installed_older for
possible values.
color_search_match The colorization/highlighting for text
matches in search. Default is ‘bold’. See
color_list_installed_older for possible values.
color_update_installed The colorization/highlighting for
packages in the "updates list" which are installed. The updates
list is what is printed when you run "yum update", "yum list
updates", "yum list obsoletes" and "yum check-update". Default
is ‘normal’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.
color_update_local The colorization/highlighting for packages in
the "updates list" which are already downloaded. The updates
list is what is printed when you run "yum update", "yum list
updates", "yum list obsoletes" and "yum check-update". Default
is ‘bold’. See color_list_installed_older for possible values.
color_update_remote The colorization/highlighting for packages
in the "updates list" which need to be downloaded. The updates
list is what is printed when you run "yum update", "yum list
updates", "yum list obsoletes" and "yum check-update". Default
is ‘normal’. See color_list_installed_older for possible
values.

[repository]OPTIONS

The repository section(s) take the following form:
Example: [repositoryid]
name=Some name for this repository
baseurl=url://path/to/repository/
repositoryid Must be a unique name for each repository, one
word.
name A human readable string describing the repository.
baseurl Must be a URL to the directory where the yum
repository’s ‘repodata’ directory lives. Can be an http://,
ftp:// or file:// URL. You can specify multiple URLs in one
baseurl statement. The best way to do this is like this:
[repositoryid]
name=Some name for this repository
baseurl=url://server1/path/to/repository/
url://server2/path/to/repository/
url://server3/path/to/repository/
If you list more than one baseurl= statement in a repository you
will find yum will ignore the earlier ones and probably act
bizarrely. Don’t do this, you’ve been warned.
You can use HTTP basic auth by prepending "user:password@" to
the server name in the baseurl line. For example:
"baseurl=http://user:passwd@example.com/".
metalink Specifies a URL to a metalink file for the repomd.xml,
a list of mirrors for the entire repository are generated by
converting the mirrors for the repomd.xml file to a baseurl. The
metalink file also contains the latest timestamp from the data
in the repomd.xml, the length of the repomd.xml and checksum
data. This data is checked against any downloaded repomd.xml
file and all of the information from the metalink file must
match. This can be used instead of or with the baseurl option.
Substitution variables, described below, can be used with this
option. This option disables the mirrorlist option. As a
special hack is the mirrorlist URL contains the word "metalink"
then the value of mirrorlist is copied to metalink (if metalink
is not set).
mirrorlist Specifies a URL to a file containing a list of
baseurls. This can be used instead of or with the baseurl
option. Substitution variables, described below, can be used
with this option. As a special hack is the mirrorlist URL
contains the word "metalink" then the value of mirrorlist is
copied to metalink (if metalink is not set).
enabled Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not use
this repository.
gpgcheck Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not it
should perform a GPG signature check on the packages gotten from
this repository.
repo_gpgcheck Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not
it should perform a GPG signature check on the repodata from
this repository.
gpgkey A URL pointing to the ASCII-armored GPG key file for the
repository. This option is used if yum needs a public key to
verify a package and the required key hasn’t been imported into
the RPM database. If this option is set, yum will automatically
import the key from the specified URL. You will be prompted
before the key is installed unless the assumeyes option is set.
Multiple URLs may be specified here in the same manner as the
baseurl option (above). If a GPG key is required to install a
package from a repository, all keys specified for that
repository will be installed.
exclude Same as the [main] exclude option but only for this
repository. Substitution variables, described below, are
honored here.
includepkgs Inverse of exclude. This is a list of packages you
want to use from a repository. If this option lists only one
package then that is all yum will ever see from the repository.
Defaults to an empty list. Substitution variables, described
below, are honored here.
enablegroups Either ‘0’ or ‘1’. Determines whether yum will
allow the use of package groups for this repository. Default is
‘1’ (package groups are allowed).
failovermethod Either ‘roundrobin’ or ‘priority’.
‘roundrobin’ randomly selects a URL out of the list of URLs to
start with and proceeds through each of them as it encounters a
failure contacting the host.
‘priority’ starts from the first baseurl listed and reads
through them sequentially.
failovermethod defaults to ‘roundrobin’ if not specified.
keepalive Either ‘1’ or ‘0’. This tells yum whether or not
HTTP/1.1 keepalive should be used with this repository. See the
global option in the [main] section above for more information.
timeout Overrides the timeout option from the [main] section for
this repository.
http_caching Overrides the http_caching option from the [main]
section for this repository.
retries Overrides the retries option from the [main] section for
this repository.
throttle Overrides the throttle option from the [main] section
for this repository.
bandwidth Overrides the bandwidth option from the [main] section
for this repository.
sslcacert Overrides the sslcacert option from the [main] section
for this repository.
sslverify Overrides the sslverify option from the [main] section
for this repository.
sslclientcert Overrides the sslclientcert option from the [main]
section for this repository.
sslclientkey Overrides the sslclientkey option from the [main]
section for this repository.
metadata_expire Overrides the metadata_expire option from the
[main] section for this repository.
mirrorlist_expire Overrides the mirrorlist_expire option from
the [main] section for this repository.
proxy URL to the proxy server for this repository. Set to
’_none_’ to disable the global proxy setting for this
repository. If this is unset it inherits it from the global
setting
proxy_username username to use for proxy. If this is unset it
inherits it from the global setting
proxy_password password for this proxy. If this is unset it
inherits it from the global setting
cost relative cost of accessing this repository. Useful for
weighing one repo’s packages as greater/less than any other.
defaults to 1000

URLINCLUDESYNTAX

The inclusion of external configuration files is supported for
/etc/yum/yum.conf and the .repo files in the /etc/yum/repos.d
directory. To include a URL, use a line of the following format:
include=url://to/some/location
The configuration file will be inserted at the position of the
"include=" line. Included files may contain further include lines. Yum
will abort with an error if an inclusion loop is detected.

VARIABLES

There are a number of variables you can use to ease maintenance of
yum’s configuration files. They are available in the values of several
options including name, baseurl and commands.$releasever This will be replaced with the value of the version
of the package listed in distroverpkg. This defaults to the
version of ‘redhat-release’ package.
$arch This will be replaced with your architecture as listed by
os.uname()[4] in Python.
$basearch This will be replaced with your base architecture in
yum. For example, if your $arch is i686 your $basearch will be
i386.
$YUM0-$YUM9 These will be replaced with the value of the shell
environment variable of the same name. If the shell environment
variable does not exist then the configuration file variable
will not be replaced.